The big sports-news in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 23 July was that the rapper Drake has been ordered by the University of Kentucky to stop publicizing a picture he made with a UK athlete apparently during the October 2014 basketball “Midnight Madness” activity celebrating the university's concept of God, called Basketball. The publicity is a minor infraction of NCAA rules. UK basketball coach John Calipari, according to the article, called Drake a dear friend who would be welcome to visit any time. This is a line from one of Drake's latest “songs” called “Energy:” They tryna take the wave from a nigga/Fuckin' with the kid and pray for your nigga. That's real class.

The “madness” event is also celebrated on a number of university campuses, is covered by TV, and involves making icons of basketball players. This effort, like the ones preceding it each year, trivialized the sport and sorta made monkeys out of those who perpetrated and attended it. Assuming the final okay for this coronation of campus royalty came from University of Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart, one wonders if he needs to step up to the next level of maturity.

The UK affair cost $300,000, roughly equivalent to a year's tuition and fees for 31 actual students. The basketball players are predominantly part of the minor leagues for the NBA and expect to be gone after one year of non-study unless they aren't judged high draft-picks as freshmen, in which case they stay for a second year of non-study...maybe even a third. Their career as UK players, as often noted by Coach Calipari, is a one-shot stab at greatness, thus not an academic endeavor.

The big draw last year was trash-mouth-rapper Drake. Strangely, Rap is usually described as music. It's actually a recitation set to an accompaniment of percussion instruments, mostly drums, that might accompany a dance with grunts, groans and screams in deepest Africa engaged in just before some sort of tribal bloodletting or par-boiling of a missionary. Back in the day, it would have been a celebration when one tribe sold the men of a defeated tribe to the slave-traders.

Drake couldn't do his act in the Madness venue, even though the young people there were familiar with his lyrics/performances and were misled into believing he would regurgitate his thing. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been the main-liner. A look at some of his stuff is instructive for sound, fury and “poetry.” Drake's buzz-words are fuckin', nigga, bitch and shit. His masterpiece called “The Catch Up” features two “fuckin' niggas” caught up in a—you guessed it—gun-fight.

In his classic called “The Motto,” he raps about the fuckin' man, the bitch, the real nigga and shit. This is his phrase in Motto: “almost drowned in her pussy so I swam to her butt.” Another: “I tongue-kiss her other tongue.” Get it? In his classic tune “Light Up,” he uses the term “mother-fucker.” This usage is as sacred to gangsta-rap as Christ's mother Mary is to Christianity. Here's a line: “Wait until the sun goes down and we gon' make this bitch light up.” His conclusion: “fuck niggas, bitches, too, all I got is money, this'll do.”

Contextually, one has to remember that the women's basketball team and women cheerleaders are/were part of Midnight Madness. In Drake's parlance the “ho,” rap-term for whore, is mentioned, and these UK women were exposed to Drake, who sees them not as human beings but objects to use, abuse, discard. Was Drake's background even cursorily examined by Barnhart, Calipari, and—oh yes—Matthew Mitchell, the women's coach? Sad fact: it probably was and considered a real turn-on for today's sophisticated adolescents and 20-somethings. Maybe the headliner for 2015 will be Miley Cyrus appearing nude to “twerk” with an assistant coach.

Mitchell added to the denigration of women by cavorting and aping somebody called Bruno Mars. I don't know what he performed but in Mars' classic “When I Was Your Man,” the singer lamented longingly about the fact that his shack-up partner (ho) is gone. In Mars' number “Locked Out of Heaven” (another masterpiece?), is this line: “Your sex takes me to paradise.” Hopefully, Mitchell didn't “writhe” that one.

Mars collaborated on this artistry called “Bubble Butt.” His line was one of the mildest: “Turn around, stick it out, show the world you got...”. From Mars' “Like Tonight,” this gem: “You've got your lips along my body And I'm not gonna stop you...”. What was Matthew thinking? Obviously, he wasn't...or was.

Yeah...Midnight Madness last year was Basketball Bacchanalia since it mainlined orgy as normal and should have been doubly offensive to the men's and women's teams since about the only players who spend many minutes in at least a men's game are African-American. Drake is black and Mars is Puerto Rican/filipino. The lurid background for this stuff (men sex/rape-crazy and women as chattel) insulted all the players. The maturity-arrested spectators got what they deserved – tripe.